1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to facilitating transactions, and more specifically to facilitating digital wallet transactions.
2. Related Art
An electronic wallet (eWallet), or digital wallet, is a payment system that allows an individual to make an electronic commerce transaction, such as an online purchase of items using a computing device, for example, a mobile computing device. A server-side eWallet is created by an organization for and about an individual consumer, and is maintained on the organization's servers. Server-side eWallets provide security, efficiency, and added utility for the consumer. Electronic wallets include a software component and an information component. The information may include, for example, a user's shipping address, billing address, and payment information/credentials including credit card numbers, expiration dates, and security numbers. An electronic wallet may or may not include a near field communication (NFC) hardware component, which allows payment transactions to be performed by swiping or touching a mobile computing device, card, fob, or other hardware onto or in proximity to an enabled terminal.
Online shopping via mobile devices is often cumbersome to consumers due to the relatively small screens and lack of ease of text entry, and the checkout experience may be particularly difficult. This difficulty has led to a high degree of online shopping cart abandonment on mobile devices. A variety of electronic wallet providers have come on the market to attempt to simplify this shopping experience for the consumer. While there will likely be consolidation of these offerings in the future, it is also very likely that multiple electronic wallet options will be available.
Although each consumer is likely to adopt one digital wallet, merchants will need to support all major wallets and make them available to consumers in their purchase flow. Unfortunately, displaying more payment options in a merchant checkout flow has been shown to negatively impact merchants' conversion rate, for example, by increasing shopping cart abandonment. Consumers are presented with an array of options, most of which are irrelevant to them and possibly unfamiliar to them, resulting in an experience that causes confusion and results in lack of completion of the purchase.
Moreover, it can be difficult for an online merchant to integrate multiple digital wallet providers, because this adds significant cost to the merchant's software development efforts and adds complexity to the merchant's back-end accounting systems. Thus, there is a need for improved payment systems and methods that facilitate digital wallet transactions.
Embodiments of the present disclosure and their advantages are best understood by referring to the detailed description that follows. It should be appreciated that like reference numerals are used to identify like elements illustrated in one or more of the figures, wherein showings therein are for purposes of illustrating embodiments of the present disclosure and not for purposes of limiting the same.